The Reverend John Berry Meachum (1789-1854) of St. Louis: Prophet and Entrepreneurial Black Educator in Historiographical Perspective

Home , Henry Highland Garnet, Moses Roper

The North Star: A Journal of African American Religious History (ISSN: 1094-902X ) Volume 7, Number 2 (Spring 2004)

Dennis L. Durst, Kentucky Christian College

Introduction lifetime. He was once a slave, then a freedman. He became a Baptist preacher in St. Louis, Missouri, Wilson Jeremiah Moses is a contemporary scholar where he also engaged in entrepreneurship and well known for his analysis of messianic themes in promoted educational reform. He became a national the history of black leadership in America. Noting figure by addressing the National Negro Convention the religious context in which a mythology of black in 1846, and a local activist by founding the “Floating messianism has been nurtured, Moses concluded that Freedom School” on the Mississippi River after 1847. a fresh model for understanding African Americans as Meachum’s multiple roles sometimes stood in tension agents of social change is needed. “The problem for or even in conflict with one another. I argue that the future” noted Moses, “is to discover whether or Meachum’s complex mingling of numerous not a social reform movement can function outside leadership roles, none of which were really the hotbed of Protestant evangelicalism that, for “messianic,” has rendered him a somewhat marginal better and for worse, has been its environment for figure in historiography. Neither a militant nor a over two hundred years.”1 While Moses appears to martyr, Meachum was a nonetheless a prophetic 2 accent the worse, and my analysis to follow may seem figure. His educational vision, his entrepreneurship, to accent the better, in any event we would concur and his appeals to the biblical trope of ”Ethiopia” that the key investigative category for the history of blend other-worldly and this-worldly values in ways black leadership, namely messianism, stands in need that seem inherently perplexing, even contradictory to of a significant re-evaluation. This re-evaluation has the historian. His contextual specificity itself makes already begun in a variety of venues, and for this the his life susceptible to obscurity—the obscurity (to use historian can be thankful. Whereas messianism as a a biblical phrase) of a prophet without honor in his mythic approach to the history of American black own country. leaders has its obvious appeal and its vital exemplars, the two fundamental modes of messianism, namely Marginality—existence on the margins, borderlines, the polarities of militancy and martyrdom, tend to or interstices of society, can contribute to a person’s obscure flesh and blood figures who defy such stark becoming barely perceptible. Whether it was in his categories. own day, when his status as a freedman made him an “other,” neither slave nor citizen in Antebellum One such figure, who serves as the subject for this America; or in his portrayal in historiography, essay, is John Berry Meachum (1789-1854). wherein he receives brief but respectful mention, Meachum held a multiplicity of roles over his Meachum seems peripheral. Unlike his contemporary

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Henry Highland Garnet, for example, Meachum was newly-formed congregation, and he was formally not sufficiently radical to attract the ire of the white ordained in 1825. That year Meachum and other community. Yet Meachum was not merely members of the black Baptist community established acquiescent in the face of unjust laws in his state the First African Baptist Church of St. Louis. The suppressing the aspirations of slaves and former congregation, by then numbering about 220 members, slaves for uplift and dignity, a fact that renders him including some 200 slaves, built a new house of unlike the Uncle Tom stereotype. Meachum’s ability worship at Third and Almond Streets in 1827.5 to gain a stage for his words and actions among his peers within the free black community, as seen in his In the 1820s Meachum’s deep commitment to the participation as a speaker at the 1846 National Negro education of slave children became evident. The Convention in Philadelphia, makes clear that at least Sunday School movement was a growing component some of his peers accorded him respect. In a sense, of Protestant religious instruction for children Meachum’s multiple roles make him a challenging throughout the nation, and, in general, the movement enigma for the historian, but perhaps these very was well received in the Protestant community of St. enigmatic qualities in Meachum’s life and words Louis. An editorial on Sunday Schools in the January contribute to our correcting or nuancing the polarized 16, 1823 issue of Missouri Republican commented ways the history black leadership can often be that: “Instruction in the doctrines of Christianity analyzed. presupposes a knowledge of the rudiments of education. Children must be taught to both read and Meachum’s Educational Vision think, in order to be initiated effectually into that sublime system.”6 Historian Donnie Bellamy has In 1815, having recently purchased his own freedom, commented that “Abundance of evidence suggests John Berry Meachum followed his still-enslaved wife that blacks and whites waged a holy war against black Mary from Kentucky to St. Louis. He had only three illiteracy throughout the antebellum era in Missouri.”7 dollars in his pocket. The son of a Baptist minister, Meachum’s endeavor to educate slave children was Meachum eagerly accepted the tutelage of another not a purely religious, catechetical enterprise, but was Baptist preacher, a white missionary named John an effort to equip them for a better future, a hoped-for Mason Peck.3 Over the next few years, they worked future of freedom from slavery and grinding poverty.8 together with other blacks and whites to educate slave children in the basic skills of literacy. “Baptists did Over time, with tensions in the region over the future not require literacy as a prerequisite for preachers or of slavery in Missouri, and with reports of slave members,” writes Janet Duitsman Cornelius, “but revolts in other parts of the country, local St. Louis black leaders who seized the opportunities open to officials saw the enterprise of teaching slave children them as Baptists showed an interest in learning and to read as a subversive activity. In the early 1820s, teaching fellow slaves to read.”4 the city’s Board of Trustees passed an ordinance prohibiting the education of either free or slave Through a day school instituted by John Mason Peck, blacks. The lumping together of slave and free the Meachums became involved in Christian children made clear the racist roots of their action. education for slave children. During the years of Punishments for violations of this ordinance ranged 1818-1822, whites and blacks worshipped together from twenty lashes to imprisonment and fines.9 under Peck’s leadership. However, as the number of black Baptists grew, the church leaders (whether the Rules against literacy education for slave children decision was mutual between black and white were enforced only sporadically, yet Meachum’s believers is unclear) deemed it expedient that black efforts encountered active opposition as when the congregants have their own, separate meetings. John local Sheriff arrested Meachum and a white Berry Meachum gradually took over leadership of the Englishman whom he had hired as a teacher while

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they were instructing their students in the church simplistic and unrealistic. After all, not all basement. Following this incident, the school’s slaveholders gave their slaves the option of buying students were scattered, and local authorities forced their own freedom, very few southern states held the school’s closure by means of threats against manumission to be a legal option, and the very notion Meachum and Peck. Meachum’s commitment to the of having to buy one’s liberty only cast into bold education of African American children and the risks relief the fundamental injustice of reducing humans to he took on their behalf would affect such young the status of property to begin with. Nonetheless, students as James Milton Turner, who was present Meachum’s efforts to empower people through those when Meachum was arrested. Turner later became means available to them appears to have been a subtle one of St. Louis’s most prominent black citizens and, method of subverting the peculiar institution, even if as an adult, would champion black education in too slowly or too conventionally in the minds of many Missouri and serve at the national level as a Consul to of his contemporaries or of later historians. Liberia under President Grant.10 Economic empowerment for blacks was a form of protest, particularly within the context of the severe Meachum’s biographical experiences had an obvious limitations placed on free blacks in antebellum impact on the advice he would offer to other free Missouri. As Gayle T. Tate has noted: blacks in his 1846 Address to all the Colored Citizens of the United States. Since “industriousness” had Although the nationalist components of paid off in terms of freedom and economic success racial unity and spiritual redemption for Meachum, he was convinced such a path would provided much of the driving force behind contribute to the uplift of his people generally. The Black resistance, pragmatic nationalism’s specific contours of his ideology of economic and emphasis on material elevation, education, educational empowerment and the centrality of organization, and the acquisition of property industriousness to his educational philosophy are was not overshadowed. Thus, collective evident in the Address. His rhetoric was sharp, but I material progress was seen not only as believe Meachum used this tone because of his firm dispelling the stereotypical notions of belief in the inherent and latent abilities in his hearers African inferiority but as a central force in and readers, both free blacks and slaves: Black resistance.12

In order that we might do more for Conformity to American capitalistic methods, then, our young children, I would when contextualized against white assumptions about recommend manual labor schools free blacks, can be read as a subversive activity. to be established in the different states, so as the children could have The twin themes of piety and industrious habits that free access to them. And I would Meachum stressed in the Address echoed his own recommend in these schools pious core values as a Baptist preacher and as an teachers, either white or colored, entrepreneur. Eddie S. Glaude has noted the intense who would take all pains with the internal focus of the Negro Convention movement on children to bring them up in piety, “respectability.” His analysis bears quoting at length and in industrious habits. We must here: endeavor to have our children look up a little, for they are too many to The thinking went something like lie in idleness and dishonor.11 this: if we changed our attitudes and behaviour then we could It would not be hard to criticize Meachum’s command the respect of others. In “bootstrap philosophy” of economic empowerment as this view, the problems lay with our

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slothfulness and intemperance. We the nurture and admonition of the need only correct this Lord? Then if you think so, let us “impoverished” way of living and feel it a duty enjoined upon every the difficulties facing the son and daughter of our race, to community would inevitably endeavor to become united, that we disappear. The latter responded to may throw our mites together, and the problem of racism by accenting have schools in every state and the agency of black people, county where the free children are insisting that they were capable of in large numbers.16 responding, through self-critique and improvement, to the problems Even as Meachum provided strong arguments based facing the black community. This in biblical precepts in support of the education of immanent conversation constituted black children and emphasized the elements of a call of sorts for solidaristic efforts conformity to the principles of American capitalism to reject white paternalism and to and nineteenth-century notions of respectability, the alleviate the condition of black context in which he delivered his Address remained people in general.13 tense. Some free blacks and supportive whites in the border states engaged in increased educational Meachum’s active participation in the early activity, in concert with disseminating a growing Temperance movement and his strong warnings to the abolitionist literature. This was evident in St. Louis, slaves he emancipated about the negative effects of which in the 1830s was a city in turmoil over the strong drink should be understood in light of his pamphlets of Alton, Illinois abolitionist Elijah commitment to respectability.14 Lovejoy, who eventually became a martyr to the abolitionist cause.17 This agitation, along with Meachum’s Address is also characterized by growing fears over the increasing number of free considerable attention to the biblical basis for his blacks in St. Louis, led Missouri’s white power advice and admonishments and his rhetoric is laced structure to pass draconian measures that by the late with moral imperatives rooted in Biblical quotations 1840s would severely restrict educational and allusions. Meachum employed some thirty opportunities for blacks in the state. biblical passages in the first twelve pages of the Address. In arguing for education of the young, he Less than a year after Meachum published the quoted Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child the way he Address, Missouri Governor John C. Edwards should go and when he is old he will not depart from similarly promoted statewide implementation of it.” His determination to educate the young arose manual labor schools for blacks, but his rhetoric rang from the central interpersonal ethic of Christian hollow for African-Americans in the state. The chain theology: self-sacrificial love. Meachum pled: of events that followed Edwards’ proposal raised the “’Love your neighbor as yourself,’ is the command of stakes for Meachum’s congregation and the children the New Testament. We are morally bound by the they sought to educate. Meachum’s response to the law of God to teach this to our children.”15 He challenges posed by the power structure of his own interwove further scriptural justification for his state of Missouri has firmly assured his place in the educational vision into his narrative, appealing to a local lore of St. Louis, and increasingly in the broader generalized sense of parental duty: story of African American history. Early in the year 1847, Missouri’s legislature passed resolutions I ask the reader, if it would not be challenging Governor Edwards to detail his plan for to the glory of God for us to the education of teachers and for the establishment of endeavor to train up our children in common schools for the citizens of Missouri and

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Edwards’ reply documented the broad outlines of his present during all the time of such plan. While some rhetoric in the document could meeting or assemblage, in order to alternately amuse or offend us today, it does provide prevent all seditious speeches, and a glimpse into the stock vocabulary of democratic disorderly and unlawful conduct of idealism utilized in this period: every kind.19

The young men sent to each [of] the This legislation was an extension of district or township schools, should a political history of imposing impart nothing but true knowledge. increasingly repressive laws in The farmer or the mechanic—the Missouri that structured life for shoemaker or the miller—the both enslaved and free blacks. In blacksmith or the carpenter—the 1817, the territory of Missouri had spinner or the weaver—the attempted to forestall slave engineer or the machine maker, if uprisings by prohibiting assembly properly instructed himself, can or travel by free blacks. In 1825 impart knowledge as correctly as came a law rendering blacks legally the lawyer or physician, the incompetent to serve as witnesses merchant or divine.18 in trials involving whites. In 1835 blacks were stripped of the right to Edwards laid out an apparently progressive, forward- bear arms and restrictions were looking design for state education, one purportedly placed on black participation in inclusive of all classes and genders, and inculcating apprenticeships. That same year, industriousness by blending book learning with freedom of movement in and out of practical labor. But a mere ten days after Edwards’s the state was limited to those free lofty goals became public record, he signed into law a blacks who obtained a license by different piece of legislation directly relevant to posting an expensive bond, or by education in Missouri giving the lie to his democratic having whites vouch for them.20 rhetoric. Its words are jarring: Edwards and the Missouri legislators were reflecting national Be it enacted by the General trends and tensions as well. The Assembly of the State of Missouri, 1842 Supreme Court decision as follows: Prigg vs. Pennsylvania had upheld the fugitive slave law of 1793.21 1. No person shall keep or teach any school Local conditionas as well worsened for the instruction of negroes or mulattoes, the situation for Meachum and his in reading or writing, in this State. sympathizers. St. Louis had a reputation for special harshness in 2. No meeting or assemblage of dealing with its slave populace, negroes or mulattoes, for the arguably due to its tense purpose of religious worship, or geographical and demographic preaching, shall be held or situation as a border city with a permitted where the services are significant black population, both performed or conducted by negroes slave and free.22 or mulattoes, unless some sheriff, constable, marshal, police officer, Literacy education, as is widely or justice of the peace, shall be noted by historians, was something

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of a “holy grail” for slaves and subsequent actions as it is premised on breaking an former slaves in the antebellum unjust law and then suffering unjust consequences so South and Meachum and other as to appeal to the conscience of the oppressor. But African Americans in Missouri Meachum’s action flouted the unjust law, without were shaped by this sensibility and technically breaking it. After the Missouri responded to the legislation of 1847 Legislature passed the 1847 law, Meachum procured in light of this perspective. a boat and equipped it with a library, and to this he added tables, benches, and the other accoutrements of Literacy meant African-Americans could read the a classroom. He anchored his vessel in the federally- parts of the Bible whites neglected to teach them, that protected Mississippi river and began to shuttle slave they could read the promises of the nation’s founding children out to the craft in small skiffs. John Berry documents, and that they could become self-sufficent Meachum’s “Floating Freedom School,” as it came to and break their dependence on a master. According be known, was a bold act of defiance, demonstrating to one study of the subject, literacy also meant the his power and agency as an educator.24 The boldness following to black people in slavery: identity of the move is emphasized when we consider the formation (identity as freedom), self-worth, self- observation in “The Narrative of William Wells determination, communal expressions of resistance to Brown” that Francis McIntosh, a free colored man oppression, the creation of a liberating religious from Pittsburgh, had been taken from a steamboat consciousness, and a breaking of dependency upon named The Flora, and had been burned at the stake whites.23 near the city of St. Louis.25 Despite such dangers, teachers from the East came to join Meachum’s As a pioneering figure in black literacy, Meachum’s effort, indicating that the fame of his activity had greatest claim to fame developed not so much from spread beyond his local context.26 his words in the Address of 1846, but in his actions in response to the repressive legislation of 1847. The Again, Meachum’s marginality is highlighted by these 1847 statute went beyond prohibiting literacy training events, and even given a literal geographical for black children. It struck at the very heart of expression by Meachum’s activities. Technically, the African-American aspirations and identity, for it Floating Freedom School, located in a federal space targeted freedom of worship and assembly along with (the Mississippi River) and a marginal area separating freedom to receive an education (thus violating a free from a slave state, did not violate the law. numerous provisions of the Bill of Rights). Worship Quiet and largely out of public view, the school was services were the one context in which slaves and not a boisterous form of protest. Yet it was a sign former-slaves could express their heartfelt anguish that free blacks such as Meachum would not simply and experience a catharsis otherwise unavailable and acquiesce in the removal of the key avenue to their the Sunday School was the central educational aspirations of self-improvement and economic institution of African-American life. Strictures empowerment. I suggest a neologism, perhaps civil placed upon such avenues for black agency cried out misobedience, to capture the spirit of Meachum’s for an activist response and Meachum, the preacher, activist educational stratagem. educator, and entrepreneur, soon made a bold and subversive move. The gap between Meachum’s idealistic rhetoric on the national stage, and the conditions he soon faced at By 1847, Meachum’s instructional enterprise violated the local level, manifested a bitter and harsh reality. both city ordinance and state law. In response, he In the year 1849 St. Louis suffered a devastating developed a plan of action that thwarted the law cholera epidemic, eventually claiming some 6,000 without actually breaking it. The term civil lives. On May 19, a fire spread from a levee to river disobedience is inadequate to describe Meachum’s vessels and buildings along the riverfront. Twenty-

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three steamboats were destroyed; fifteen city blocks southern states passed laws in an attempt to restrict of buildings were gutted, and estimates of damage manumission. Such laws were flouted in a variety of range from three to six million dollars. Yet despite ways. Perhaps more inhibitory was the ire any these hardships, the citizens of St. Louis turned out manumitting master would incur from his the following month to vote in favor of a school tax slaveholding contemporaries. Whatever the reason, by a margin of two to one.27 By contrasting the the rate of legal manumission generally slowed down enthusiasm of St. Louisans for educating white in the years before the Civil War. The proportion of children with the state law barring literacy to African-Americans who were legally classified as free “negroes and mulattoes,” such rank hypocrisy cried in the South declined from 8.1% in 1820 to 6.2% by out for an activist response. Thus Meachum’s 1860. Yet in sheer numbers during that period (given Floating Freedom School’s education of black the numerical increase among African-Americans children into the 1850s not only improved the lot of generally), the (legally) free black populace grew those children, but stood as a prophetic rebuke to the from 134,223 to 261,918.29 unjust social conditions that made such measures necessary. Masters desirous of manumitting their slaves and slaves eager for their freedom devised numerous ways Meachum’s Entrepreneurship of circumventing the laws. Straightforwardly illegal manumission, nominal manumission (i.e., individuals who were slaves “on paper” but not in practice), Meachum was not only a preacher and an educator, manumission procured by subterfuge, and deathbed but an entrepreneur and emancipator. The growing or testamentary manumission describe just a few of number of blacks moving from slavery to freedom the ways slaves could achieve a greater measure of gave Meachum practical opportunities to train his freedom.30 For some (at least prior to the passage of fellow blacks in marketable skills, which in turn led restrictive laws), legal means seemed the most to their increased self-empowerment. In the state of expedient way of leaving enslavement behind. John Missouri, one of only two southern states that did not Berry Meachum started his life in slavery in the state criminalize manumission, the free black population of Virginia, was moved to North Carolina and later to experienced a dramatic increase. Between 1820 and Kentucky by his master, Paul Meachum. His 1846 1850, the ranks of liberated African-Americans rose Address contains a brief autobiographical account of from 347 free blacks in 1820 to 2,618 free blacks in his life that bears review here in the context of 1850. Ira Berlin’s classic study of freedmen notes examining his development as a religious leader, that “. . . while rural Missourians rarely freed their educator, entrepreneur, and abolitionist. Having been slaves, a growing number of St. Louis masters granted by his master some time to earn his own liberated their bondsmen or allowed them to buy their money, Meachum worked in a saltpeter cave in freedom.”28 Kentucky in order to earn enough money to purchase his own freedom. Once free, he moved from Kentucky back to his home state of Virginia in order Free blacks in the antebellum South were marginal to emancipate his father. According to an extant figures who often had to keep their activities at a low sermon preached by a protégé of John Berry level of visibility. As living proof of the falsity of Meachum’s shortly after his death, his former master much racist rhetoric about the abilities of blacks, they (Paul Meachum), himself near death, granted John were often treated with deep suspicion and fear by Berry Meachum charge of some seventy-five slaves white slaveholders and legislators. As Berlin’s and instructed him to move them north into Ohio to analysis shows, their numbers relative to the free them. In Ohio the group was greeted by an angry population fluctuated from decade to decade, but by mob, but the mob was dispersed through 1810 were showing signs of decline. After 1820 most circumstances John Berry Meachum later would

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attribute to prayer and providence. These slaves impulse toward democracy and voluntarism nurtured eventually were liberated and settled in the state of by the independent black church movement, Indiana.31 John Berry Meachum’s wife Mary, still particularly in its Baptist and Methodist iterations. enslaved, had been moved to Missouri during his As Nathan O. Hatch has noted, “By its emancipatory task in Indiana, so he had learned of her democratization in black hands, the church served as move by heart-rending discovery. Now destitute of the major rallying point for human dignity, freedom, funds, he had to work for a time to earn travel money. and equality among those who bore slavery’s cruel After earning enough money to travel west, he yoke.”33 Meachum’s own appropriation of a followed Mary and worked for her emancipation. By democratic ethos recast the matter of self- the time of the 1846 address, he boasted that he had determination in terms both biblical and African by freed some twenty additional slaves by purchasing employing in the Address an obscure passage in the them and teaching them skills of economic self- book of Psalms. He pointed to a reference to reliance. Ethiopia (drawn from Psalm 68:31, KJV) a text that proved particularly evocative for antebellum African Using the slave system against itself was perhaps a Americans, with its bracing words: “Princes shall triumph of pragmatism over principle. Yet this was a come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her far cry from the stereotypical “Uncle Tom” motif in hands to God.” Meachum’s case, because while he expressed affection for his former master, he did not remain Meachum, the Ethiopia Motif, and Black National with that master’s family but sought a life of greater Identity independence. His own family took precedence over the household in which he was raised, even if he at “Ethiopianism” is a term that has gained a specific times expressed affection for Paul Meachum. John meaning in scholarly literature on the history of black Berry Meachum’s experience of self-emancipation, nationalism. As an ideology with a specialized articulated in his sermons and in his 1846 Address following in African American culture (or, perhaps doubtless resonated with many free blacks who had more accurately, as a subculture thereof), Wilson likewise exerted initiative in their own liberation. Jeremiah Moses has described Ethiopianism as “the The historian—separated by time and social comforts millennial Christianity of various sects and cults from the existential realities of antebellum black arising at the end of the nineteenth century.” Moses experience-- does best to refrain from passing value has pointed out, however, that the theme has roots in judgments on the actions of those under oppression the earlier rhetoric of black missionaries with a doing what they can. Given the practical exigencies history stretching back into the eighteenth century. of their situation and status, one can admire the Often in the antebellum era, the Ethiopia theme efforts of antebellum blacks to secure the greatest served as a call to liberate the continent of Africa measure of freedom available to them by the means from European colonialism, yet with the concurrent most readily at their disposal. For some slaves, such call for Christianizing it by means of African- as Moses Roper, the sheer cruelty of the master American missionaries.34 Patrick Rael has noted that dictated that escape was the only viable approach.32 Episcopalian minister Alexander Crummell utilized For others, such as Denmark Vesey and Henry the Ethiopia passage so as to buttress the case for Highland Garnet, outright violent revolt appeared to colonization as a solution to the problem of slavery. be both opportune and principled. For Meachum, a Rael’s analysis of the problematic quality of the less radical path presented itself and he seized upon “fortunate fall” thesis for later black nationalism(s), it. Meachum used the peculiar institution to subvert and the countervalent “unfortunate fall” thesis casts that same institution, at least in the case of that the ambiguity of the Ethiopia theme into even bolder limited number of apprentices he was able to set free. relief.35 For the majority of free blacks in America, Meachum’s entrepreneurial capitalism illustrates the colonization was not a live option, and so the dream

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of an Ethiopia-like civilization came to be offered a stark contrast between their position in transplanted, so to speak, by black preachers such as American society and their potential as a community: Meachum, into American soil. Meachum’s emphasis on Ethiopianism stressed the efforts of former slaves, Ethiopians! The power of Divinity particularly free blacks in the North, to accomplish having within us, as man, implanted that end. Furthermore, as Joanne Pope Melish has a sense of the due and prerogatives noted, many black leaders in the 1830s and beyond belonging to you, a people, of refrained from forcing a choice between self- whom we were of your race, in part referential terms “colored” or “African” so as to born, as a mirror we trust, to reflect maximize both goals of claiming their rights as to you from a review of ourselves, Americans and invoking their solidarity with the the dread condition in which you do oppressed peoples of Africa. But it was clearly the at this day stand. We do, therefore, former concern that was predominant in Meachum’s to the accomplishment of our era—it would take several generations before the purpose, issue this but a brief of our needs and concerns of African nations became clearly grand manifesto, herefrom articulated and advocated by African American requiring the attention towards us leaders. “They chose the language of physical of every native, or those proceeding difference as their primary form of identification as a in descent from the Ethiopian or present, living group in order to avoid weakening African people; a regard to your their claim to American citizenship;” Melish argues, welfare being the great and continuing, “at the same time, they renewed their inspiring motive which leads us to historical identification with the Africa of this our undertaking.37 antiquity—emphasizing the glories of ancient Egypt and Ethiopia, whose achievements stood as a Some 17 years later, John Berry Meachum evoked the powerful rebuttal to accusations of innate inferiority Ethiopia theme in his Address. Meachum’s Address associated with that physical identity.”36 African has failed to garner the degree of attention from terminology thus served more immediate and pressing historians that protest literature or other Negro goals for leaders like Meachum, who yearned for a Convention speeches have -- most notably Henry place in advancing civilization, perhaps too uncritical Highland Garnet’s famous 1843 call for insurrection of how that term was often deployed by whites to – likely because of the mainstream position that he buttress a supremacist mentality. stakes out with regard to a range of issues in African Meachum was not the first African-American to build American life at the time.38 Perhaps its lack of an on the Ethiopia theme as a call for social change in incendiary quality and its use of arguments well- America. In 1829, for example, Robert Alexander established in the convention speeches by 1846, when Young, a New York City preacher, had published the compared with the content of other public addresses “Ethiopian Manifesto.” An apocalyptic jeremiad, this of the day, rendered it simply too mundane to gain text offered both comfort to blacks in America and a widespread attention. blistering rebuke to white slaveholders, promising Although Meachum’s subtle approach might lead divine retribution for their crimes against African scholars to view the Address as unremarkable, his slaves. Thus Young mingled external and internal particular application of the biblical metaphor of foci in a “pamphlet of protest.” The sense of Ethiopia is noteworthy, particularly when examined peoplehood for the black community, reinforced by in contrast to the Exodus motif even more dominant social injustice, was often mediated in black and widespread in black preaching. This elusive preaching through biblical language such as the topic comes into even better focus when refracted Exodus trope. For Young, the primary biblical through the prism of Meachum’s life experiences. metaphor of peoplehood was the Ethiopia trope that

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As Glaude and others have rightly pointed out, the own efforts. They could practice capitalism in ways Exodus theme was extremely important in communal equal to or better than any competitors, if only they identity-formation for slaves and former slaves alike. could and would seize the opportunity. Ethiopia had Glaude argues that “Nation language emerged in a mythic quality resonant of the continent of Africa African American political discourse as a synonym and of both past and future greatness for a people for peoplehood, a way of grounding solidaristic uprooted yet planted anew in the soil of America. efforts in an understanding of America’s racial, Albert J. Raboteau comments that: hegemonic order.”39 Whereas the Puritans of an earlier era had held an ideal of America as a promised All interpreters of the verse agreed land, slaves recognized in the predominant system of that Egypt and Ethiopia referred to slavery a society run by a new set of greedy Pharaohs. ‘the African race.’ In a kind of The power of this inverted theme as prophetic social mythic geography, nineteenth- critique can hardly be overstated. Yet for Meachum, century black Americans identified who had by this time lived as a free person for more Ethiopia and Egypt with their own than thirty years, the theme of Ethiopia was his African origins and looked to those rallying cry of the day. Several points of contrast ancient civilizations as exemplars between the two tropes deserve elucidation. of a glorious African past, surely as legitimate a fictive pedigree as The Exodus theme was a theme of journey and white American claims of descent pilgrimage. The middle passage had been an from Greco-Roman civilization.”42 uprooting experience that can scarcely be imagined for the terror and anguish it evoked—a storied The Ethiopia theme held a scope and a dignity that fit experience kept alive in the collective memory of well with Meachum’s aspirations for black solidarity. slaves.40 Add to that memory the unsettled life of Through speaking at the 1846 National Negro slavery in which taking root in a community was Convention in Philadelphia, and through publication impossible for many reasons. Slaves were often, at of his Address, Meachum sought a national audience the capricious whim of their masters, being sold and for his views on the education of black children, his thus torn from their kinfolk and friends, perhaps to be entrepreneurial vision, and his call to unity under the sent several states distant, often never to see their idealistic banner of “Ethiopia.” Meachum also served loved ones again. Even with relatively kind masters, in that same period on a committee for the promotion as in Meachum’s case, the slave still had no choice of the National Convention of the Colored Citizens of but to move when the master moved, wreaking havoc America, projected for 1847. Meachum outlined the on natural familial ties. Family destruction and the purposes of that event as including, “. . .to take into demeaning of labor reinforced the rootless, pilgrim- consideration the general education of our youth, and like ethos that found its resonance in black preaching also the general union of those free people of color of the Exodus and wilderness wandering narratives of that are now scattered in different directions in the the Bible. Slave songs contained dual messages, with United States of America.”43 According to Jane and Canaan land standing as a ubiquitous metaphor of William Pease, by the 1840s the emphasis of these heaven, but also symbolizing a prophetic cry for conventions was shifting away from an assimilationist emancipation or escape to the “free” northern states.41 stance dominant in the 1830s and toward an emphasis The Ethiopia theme stood in tension with the Exodus on black nationalism with its themes of self- motif. The repetition of references to Ethiopia in sufficiency and political pressure on the white power Meachum’s Address evinced his impatience with a structure.44 Elements of both impulses are detectable transitory existence. Meachum envisioned the black in Meachum’s Address, and the document shows him community as a renewed civilization, and its members to be a figure who defies easy categorization, and as paragons of success in their own right, and by their this, in my view, has contributed to his marginality.

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His multiple roles—preacher, educator, entrepreneur, community. The opening words of the Address national spokesman placed him in a situation of great evince a biblicist and providential view of human tension and frustration. In 1846 he offered a history in which African Americans played a vital sweeping agenda for a national reform of black role: education, the cutting edge of a reclaimed national civilization encapsulated in the vision of Ethiopia. PROVIDENCE has placed us all on Yet in 1847, his own state legislature virtually forced the shores of America—and God him to move his classroom to a boat anchored amid has said ‘Ethiopia shall soon stretch the swelter and stench of the Mississippi river. Then out her hands To God’ Psalm 68, tensions between a utopian vision and disappointing 31. This being true, is it not reality doubtless inflicted a severe psychological toll. necessary that some exertion should be made? Ought we not to use our As has been noted, Meachum followed a pattern for influence and the means placed in bringing slaves into freedom that was subtle, discreet, our power for the consummation of and largely non-confrontational. Though from one this end. All will admit that we are vantage point this might appear to make him capable of elevating ourselves, for complicit in slavery, from another vantage point this we have once been distinguished as activity shows resourcefulness and ingenuity. This one of the greatest nations, and it is pattern of laboring to purchase the freedom of not reasonable to suppose that what has only his family, but also numerous other slaves once been can be again. Sin has instilled in Meachum a deep belief in the power of degraded us, but righteousness will “industriousness.” This became a watchword he was exalt us.46 not reticent to proclaim to others. His emphasis on industriousness gave an entrepreneurial cast to his Meachum called for unification of black folk as a educational philosophy. means of promoting education eventually leading to exaltation.47 Meachum tapped into a rhetorical In order to become a great nation like Ethiopia, much tradition stressing uplift—but was more concerned had to be done. Meachum’s themes of moral reform, with black self-improvement than with any alleged manual labor schools, entrepreneurial drive, and effect their exemplary character might have upon black national unity illustrate the emphasis of the recalcitrant whites. His tripartite program of religion, conventions on moral reform, exemplary living, and education, and financial resourcing was aimed education as means to the goal of social “uplift.” His squarely at his own extended community:48 sense of the corporate nature of this enterprise appears to be derived both from scripture and from All will admit that we are capable his hardscrabble life. The twin forces of the of elevating ourselves, for we have authoritative biblical text and his own experience of once been distinguished as one of success convinced him of the exemplary power of his the greatest nations, and it is personal values for the benefit of his community as a reasonable to suppose that what has whole. Meachum utilized often the first-person plural once been can be again. Sin has pronoun “we” in building solidarity with his degraded us, but righteousness will audience, primarily free blacks like himself. He also exalt us. We are under positive emphasized scriptures that focus upon unity, such as moral obligation to effect this Ps. 133:1 “Behold how good and how pleasant it is object, by our religious influence, for brethren to dwell together in unity!”45 by mental culture, and by Furthermore, he used the term “nation” to refer not to appropriating a portion of our the United States, but to the African American worldly goods to the

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accomplishment of this end.49 Address, bespoke his sense of the inherent abilities of those whom he did address—his fellow-blacks in During the mid-1840s the Negro conventions were general, and free blacks in particular.53 His was a growing increasingly polarized between factions program of positive action, of self-emancipation, not emphasizing moral suasion and those emphasizing a a patient waiting for the conscience of white America form of political action that embraced violence if to awaken. necessary.50 Meachum appears, on the whole, to have aligned more closely with the “moral suasion” side of Meachum’s references to fratricidal infighting in the the debate. Nowhere in the document did he community make even more sense in light of the advocate any course of action approaching bitter disputes within the conventions, and within the insurrection. Instead, Meachum focused almost pages of the various anti-slavery newspapers that entirely on the hortatory mode of discourse in internal were proliferating by this time.54 As a centrist figure or “immanent” conversation with his fellow-blacks. perhaps Meachum strove to be a mediating figure His harshest criticisms were of those within the fold, between factions in the free black community. As far his own people, in phrases that today would usually as the Address goes, Meachum placed the be perceived as “blaming the victim:” responsibility for fostering unity and for effectuating positive societal benefits by unified action on the shoulders of his immediate audience. The cacophony It is a common thing for people to of internal factionalism may be perceived as the suppose that our oppression is subtext of Meachum’s repeated insistence on unity as occasioned by severe restrictions the only means to improving conditions for blacks in and disabilities laid upon us by America. He was a Baptist and an evangelical, but he others, but the truth is you keep tempered the individualism typical of revivalist yourselves down, for as long as you preaching with a strong sense of community identity continue to speak evil one of the and co-operation. other and use abusive epithets and backbite, ridicule and reproach one Within the Address, Meachum held forth for several another with opprobrious names, pages on the themes of death and the final judgment, just so long will you be oppressed, the threat of damnation and the call to repentance.55 for it is an old and true maxim, “if But unlike the pious personal moralism of much of you do not respect yourself others the preaching of his contemporaries, by revisiting the will not respect you.”51 Ethiopia theme with which the Address had opened, Meachum emphasized the corporate identity of These words, harsh though they may seem, place African Americans, as well as corporate salvation. Meachum in the long tradition of the prophet whose This motif drew Meachum back to a communal focus uncompromising ethical stance leads him to rebuke found in the prophetic literature of the Hebrew an already suffering people. In contrast with Young’s Scriptures in the writers’ call for national repentance, 1829 pamphlet centered on the Ethiopia trope, a theme often lost in the individualistic conversionism criticism of the slaveholder is muted at best within of antebellum evangelicalism. He cried out: “O, Meachum’s rhetoric.52 In a sense, Meachum’s rebuke Ethiopia, have you obeyed the voice of God of white oppression took the form of a studied Almighty, that spoke by the voice of thunder, to the silence. Doubtless we might also surmise that Israelites on the Mount Sinai?”56 Thus Meachum Meachum held certain white co-workers, such as the made explicit a familiar linkage in African-American white educators who had assisted him over the years, preaching, namely, the continuity of the black in high esteem. Meachum’s words, as well as his community with ancient Israel, with an attendant unconcern with speaking directly to whites in the sense of covenantal peoplehood and a yearning for

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freedom from slavery.57 Meachum recontextualized “Uncle Toms” at the opposite end? I contend here this peoplehood for his audience within the identity of that Meachum does not qualify as a messiah figure in Ethiopia, a great African civilization. these polarized modes of expression, but does qualify in important ways as a figure situated between these For Meachum, concern for the afterlife and diligent poles, namely as prophet, understood in the provisioning for this life were all of one piece. His sociological terms defined by Max Weber, with narrative interwove attention to eternity and attention attention to the aforementioned work of Wilson to the mundane: Jeremiah Moses.

Then why sit ye here and look at In his epochal work, The Sociology of Religion, one another? Why not get enough Weber set forth the characteristics of the religious to last as long as you and all your figure of the “prophet” in a profile derived from a family live. Don’t sit there any comparative examination of the diverse traditions of longer. Rise and go to work like the world’s religions. At the outset of his analysis, men, and buy property and live like Weber bracketed consideration of the prophet as men and women in this world. If “bringer of salvation,” as, in his view, this identity you have not got religion, God was not a universal characteristic of prophets, though sends rain on the just and the it is an important element of many prophets in unjust. But while you are receiving religious history. Weber defined a prophet as “. . . a all these good things remember, O purely individual bearer of charisma, who by virtue of man, that thou hast an immortal his mission proclaims a religious doctrine or divine soul that has to be saved or lost to commandment.”59 all eternity. Then let us wake up, not only in regard to earthly It is important to note that, despite this individualistic concerns, but also in regard to emphasis in Weber, the prophetic motif, at least in eternity, which is just before us.58 Judaism and Christianity, has a significant communal importance as well. We need only think of Here Meachum constructed the American dream in Jeremiah’s laments in the Hebrew Scriptures over the general, and property ownership in particular, not as a anguish of the people with whom he so passionately mere wistful aspiration, but as a positive duty to be identified, and his resistance to the proclamations of carried out in tandem with (and ostensibly in an doom God called him to announce. Or we could note unproblematic harmony with) a concern for one’s Isaiah’s suffering servant passages, some of which salvation. An education that focused on developing have a clearly “corporate” or national thrust.60 the character traits as well as the manual skills of Though the doctrine of prophetic speech is clearly industry would empower his people to realize the religious, it is at the same time often aimed at social dream. Thus, Meachum urged unity and a renewal of reform as a concomitant of individual repentance.61 commitment to the manual labor school effort on a national scale in order to bring to reality his sweeping Wilson Jeremiah Moses’ analysis of black religious vision of African Americans as a people of destiny. leadership with its communal emphasis becomes a valuable corrective to the individualistic ethos of Weber’s articulation of the qualities of religious Prophet, Yes; Messiah, No prophets. For example, among four major patterns Moses discovered in his broad and impressive So where does Meachum “fit” with regard to investigation of “messianic” themes in black literature messianic figures such as the insurrectionists on one and in American culture more generally, is “the end of the spectrum, and the suffering servant-like concept of the redemptive mission of the black

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race.”62 Here I see Meachum’s emphasis on Ethiopia Prophets can be, and often are, ignored. Thus with as a marvelous case in point. Where I would differ regard to John Berry Meachum, I believe he is a from Moses is that the fourth of his categories, prophet (in terms of Weber’s description below), but namely “prophetism” and “prophetic movement” not a messiah. Thus he loses any heroic allure a elides the role of the prophet and the role of the messiah might claim, but he gains authenticity as one messiah too readily. I am not convinced that more complex, nuanced, and conflicted figure of prophetism is necessarily messianic in nature. I could history—one of flesh and blood, not the idealized concede that all messiahs are prophets, but would focus of an active literary imagination (while I hasten insist that not all prophets are messiahs or even to add that such an imagination is valuable and meaningfully messianic. One might be a prophet necessary at times!). without being, or even aspiring to be, a messiah figure, like, for example, John the Baptist in the New So how, precisely, was John Berry Meachum a Testament. prophetic figure? Weber identifies of the traits that characterize the prophets of various religious For the mission of a messiah to have its potency, communities. These traits include the prophet either messiahs must by nature be rare individuals. Moses as preacher of ethics or as exemplar, the prophet as analyzes many figures, both real and imagined, who laborer, and the prophet as preacher of a divine have been seen as messianic in opposite ways -- either revelation. The life and writings of John Berry as militants or as martyrs. The American literary Meachum manifest all of these characteristics. imagination thus sorts into such categories figures Meachum personifies an ambiguous via media like Henry Highland Garnet, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s between the dominant mythic roles (militant, martyr) Uncle Tom, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, identified by Wilson Moses. While Moses’ emphasis Du Bois’s Dark Princess, Joe Louis, Martin Luther on the communal and symbolic power of messianic King Jr., Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Malcolm motifs in African American history shows greater X. Moses’s analysis of such tropes is nuanced and he nuance and applicability to the black religious context is himself critical of ways that uncritical acceptance than Weber’s individualism and historic literalism, of such motifs has obscured, for example, a concern Weber’s articulation of the prophetic ethos shows for democracy beyond the borders of the U. S. He promise for explicating a particular black figure like concludes that “The paradox of African American John Berry Meachum. history is that much of our social progress has been driven by the same zealous, narrow-minded, self- Weber identified two kinds of prophets in his analysis righteous Protestantism that has so often worked of various world religions: the ethical prophet, and against us.”63 All these adjectives could apply to the exemplary prophet. The former speaks for a god, John Berry Meachum, and the question is, has the and his preaching demands obedience to specific distaste of contemporary academia for such character commands or general norms as an ethical duty. The traits itself pushed all-too-human figures like John latter shows the way to salvation by personal Berry Meachum to the margin? Could it be we are example, commending his own life’s path to others.64 drawn more readily to messiahs, whose vivid Weber’s distinction turns out to be one of emphasis contours make them easier to categorize for analysis rather than of a hard-and-fast demarcation. Both the than a figure with multiple, even conflicting, roles, ethical prophet and the exemplar are attempting to such as we find in a John Berry Meachum? bring their followers to develop a harmonious Weltanschauung: Prophets are more common than messiahs. Prophets can also be much more marginal and little-noticed. Regardless of whether a particular Messiahs tend to become focal points for followers religious prophet is predominantly and opponents alike—they are impossible to ignore. of the ethical or predominantly of

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the exemplary type, prophetic emancipation, then education and entrepreneurship, revelation involves for both the then “Ethiopia,” or communal civilization-building prophet himself and for his for the black nation within a nation. followers—and this is the common element to both varieties—a unified Weber identified prophecy in a strict sense with the view of the world derived from a offer of “a substantively new revelation” or the consciously integrated and prophet as one “speaking in the name of a special meaningful attitude toward life. To divine injunction.”67 Given Meachum’s biblicist the prophet, both the life of man Baptist denominational affiliation, and the saturation and the world, both social and of his Address with quotations and allusions to cosmic events, have a certain existing scripture, he is clearly not a prophet in the systematic and coherent meaning. sense of bringing a new revelation. But in terms of To this meaning the conduct of “speaking in the name of a special divine injunction,” mankind must be oriented if it is to and appropriating scriptures in ways uniquely bring salvation, for only in relation meaningful for African-American experiences and to this meaning does life obtain a aspirations, the quality of newness and freshness is to unified and significant pattern.65 some degree evident in Meachum. A certain revelatory quality may be seen in the Address and its John Berry Meachum fulfilled the prophetic motif in elaboration of the themes of emancipation, education, just such an integrating manner, thus I would apply to and the Ethiopia motif, when combined with him the moniker of “ethical exemplar.” In other Meachum’s subtle and creative activism in founding words, his Address incorporates elements of the Floating Freedom School. biography with a subtext that in effect says, “I have worked to empower myself and others, now I am Conclusion teaching you, my fellow African-Americans as a national community to imitate me, so we may John Berry Meachum’s Floating Freedom School accomplish self-empowerment by working together.” continued its work into the 1850s until he died in his His twin emphasis on piety and industriousness pulpit in February 1854. The anonymous author of exemplifies this merging of the “cosmic” and the his obituary underscored the race norms of the St. “social,” characteristic of an integrated worldview. Louis community reminding readers and later scholars of the context in which Meachum worked, Weber further stressed the distinction between writing: “The deceased was one of our oldest colored prophetic and priestly forms of leadership within citizens, and enjoyed the confidence of his white religious communities. One method of distinguishing brethren, among whom he was extensively them is what he labeled the “criterion of gratuitous acquainted.”68 Meachum’s value to St. Louis, even in service.” Whereas the priest receives his living from his death, this author construed in terms performing religious services, through a system of commensurate with a hegemonic white paternalism. fees or other means of remuneration, the prophet “propagates ideas for their own sake and not for fees, “Powerless” in conventional terms, John Berry at least in any obvious or regulated form.” Thus, in Meachum, while technically a freedman, labored and order to be, or at least to appear, free from the achieved much even while under the shadow of the corruption of greed, prophets were willing to engage complexional policies of Missouri. By means of a in labor.66 Meachum, like many free blacks, had vision saturated with biblical allusion and imagery, labored for his own emancipation. But what rendered and through multi-vocational toil as preacher, his labor over the course of his lifetime prophetic was entrepreneur, educator, and public speaker, he his labor on behalf of others in the quest for promoted a broader educational vision than had the

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racially and regionally stunted vision of leaders like following mission statement: “The Freedom School Governor John C. Edwards. will provide a Christ-centered, challenging elementary education in a safe and nurturing Lineaments of Meachum’s influence can be traced in environment to multi-ethnic students from Christian other elements of the history of black education in St. and non-Christian families. We strive to fully Louis. At least five other schools dedicated to the develop the God-given potential of each child to be a education of black children were established and then life long learner and to positively serve the quickly suppressed in the 1840s -- all of them church community.”72 Both the title of “Freedom School,” affiliated (Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal, and and the cooperation of various ethnic groups in the Catholic). After St. Louis had been taken by Union enterprise indicate its debt to the Meachum legacy. forces during the Civil War, William Greenleaf Eliot, Thus Meachum’s vision continues to inspire church- a white Unitarian minister, worked with a based Missouri educators. businessman named James Yeatman to establish the “American Freedom School.” This educational The tensions between moral suasionism and venture was established to give a basic education to insurrectionism in the antebellum period, or between recently-freed and fugitive slaves. The school was integrationism and black nationalism in the twentieth begun at a church site in 1863, but the building was and twenty-first centuries, exemplify a perennial burned two days later, presumably (though not struggle between two means to a shared end of a provably) by opponents of integrated education, yet better life for Americans of African descent. While the school continued on in another location. At the John Berry Meachum urged black and white co- end of the Civil War, Missouri’s new constitution of operation in the education of African-American 1865 mandated education for black children. That youth, he also embraced the notion of nationhood or year, five schools with a combined enrollment of peoplehood for the black community, and employed 1,600 were opened and administered by the “Board of the Biblical metaphor of Ethiopia to evoke a sense of Education for Colored Schools.”69 The spectre of rootedness, dignity, respectability, and destiny. This “separate but equal,” however, was not lifted in legal tension within Meachum’s vision could perhaps terms until 1954, and the remaining challenges facing illuminate other “centrist” figures in antebellum black de facto efforts at integration are well-known in St. leadership roles who have drifted to the margins of Louis as in most of America’s urban centers. history. The arguments of the 1840s over the In an era of the broken promises of reconstruction, direction of the convention movement have important another figure remarkably like Meachum arose, elements of continuing relevance today, as Eddie S. namely, Booker T. Washington. Washington was and Glaude has eloquently argued.73 Meachum is criticized for being an assimilationist, and for too- passionately proclaimed: readily embracing values some have perceived to be the cultural baggage of whites.70 Yet his Tuskegee UNION should be our constant Institute may be seen, in light of Meachum’s Address, watchword—it should be the as in many ways a fulfillment of Meachum’s vision standard to which all of us should for manual labor schools.71 rally. As in family relations, so in national affairs, --for example, a In 1997, an integrated, private elementary school man and his wife are at variance, begun by a group of St. Louis Presbyterians they disagree among themselves, consciously invoked the memory of Meachum’s but let any thing arise pertaining to educational vision in the choice of both the name and the interest of the whole family, all the emphasis of their educational venture. The minor differences and opinions are “Freedom School,” located in suburban University forthwith forgotten and they City, has set forth in its promotional literature the become united as one. Let us then,

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at this important crisis when a matter is pending which is bearing upon our present and eternal destiny, lose sight of all party spirit and sectarian feelings, and unite in one bond of love, for, as says the Psalmist, “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.”74

Lest this essay be perceived as hagiography, let me hasten to emphasize that Meachum’s vision was in key respects overly idealistic. As subsequent developments have shown, the barriers posed by systemic and individualized racism have been formidable, and piety and hard work by themselves have been hardly sufficient to overcome them. Any simple solution to the struggle has been elusive. The “American dream” is not the panacea Meachum’s words might lead us to believe, but African-American leaders today also continue to lament the liabilities inherent in the dissolution of a sense of community, as did Meachum. No single proposal has yet proven to be a “north star” to which all African Americans can give unqualified assent, leading many to question whether a uniform prescription is a feasible goal. Yet internal debate in a community is not necessarily negative or destructive, and often results in progress. As scholars continue to articulate what they perceive as the best impulses found in integrationism and black nationalism, we still find Meachum’s vision in the oft-cited maxim “think globally, act locally.”75 The values he enunciated with regard to ethically- disciplined living, community participation, educational empowerment, and the solidarity evoked by a transcendent sense of destiny, remain worthy of critical reflection today.

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Notes

1 Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth, Revised Ed. (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 238, cf. 1-16.

2 For references to Meachum in the secondary literature, see Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 201-204; Michael Patrick Williams, “The Black Evangelical Ministry in the Antebellum Border States: Profiles of Elders John Berry Meachum and Noah Davis,” Foundations 21 (1978), 225-41; George E. Stevens, History of Central Baptist Church (St. Louis: King Publishing, 1927), 7; Edward A. Freeman, The Epoch of Negro Baptists and the Foreign Mission Board (Kansas City: The Central Seminary Press, 1953), 60-61; N. Webster Moore, “John Berry Meachum (1789-1854): St. Louis Pioneer, Black Abolitionist, Educator, and Preacher,” Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society 29 (1973), 96-103; Donnie D. Bellamy, “The Education of Blacks in Missouri Prior to 1861,” Journal of Negro History 59 (1974), 149-50; Alberta D. and David O. Shipley, The History of Black Baptists in Missouri (National Baptist Convention USA: n. p., 1976), 22; Jean E. Meeh Gosebrink and Candace O’Connor, eds., Discovering African-American St. Louis: A Guide to Historic Sites (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1994), 2.

3 For details on Peck see John Mason Peck, Forty Years of Pioneer Life: Memoir of John Mason Peck, D.D., edited by Rufus Babcock (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965), passim.

4 Janet Duitsman Cornelius, “When I Can Read My Title Clear”: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South (University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 21.

5 Moore, 98-99.

6 Cited in Ralph E. Glauert, “Education and Society in Ante-Bellum Missouri” (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri, 1973), 92.

7 Bellamy, 144.

8 Ibid., 150.

9 Moore, 98-100.

10 Ibid., 100; Lawrence O. Christensen, “Schools for Blacks: J. Milton Turner in Reconstruction Missouri,” Missouri Historical Review 76 (1982): 121-35; Gary R. Kremer, James Milton Turner and the Promise of America: The Public Life of a Post-Civil War Black Leader (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 53-57.

11 John Berry Meachum, An Address to all the Colored Citizens of the United States (Philadelphia: King and Baird, 1846), 19. Some African American leaders had begun advocating the utility of manual labor schools at least as early as the 1833 Negro Convention. See Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Exodus! Religion, Race & Nation in Early Nineteenth- Century Black America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 126. See also Howard H. Bell, “National Negro Conventions of the Middle 1840’s: Moral Suasion vs. Political Action,” Journal of Negro History 42 (1957), 247.

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12 Gayle T. Tate, “Free Black Resistance in the Antebellum Era, 1830 to 1860,” Journal of Black Studies 28 (1998), 770.

13 Glaude, 118-119.

14 Williams, 233.

15 Meachum, 12-14.

16 Meachum, 17.

17 Lovejoy ran an abolitionist newspaper. Anti-abolitionist opponents threw his printing apparatus into the river on more than one occasion. On the final occasion, they killed Lovejoy in the process. In the historiography of press freedom, Lovejoy is often presented as a heroic figure. See Merton L. Dillon, Elijah P. Lovejoy, Abolitionist Editor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961) passim; and Edwin Scott Gaustad, A Religious History of America, New Revised Ed., (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), 165-66.

18 John C. Edwards, “Communication from the Governor of the State of Missouri,” in Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Missouri of the First Session of the Fourteenth General Assembly (Jefferson City, MO: James Lusk, Printer to the State, 1847), 194.

19 Laws of the State of Missouri Passed at the First Session of the Fourteenth General Assembly (City of Jefferson: James Lusk Public Printer, 1847), 103-104. The statute continues: “3. All meetings of negroes or mulattoes, for the purposes mentioned in the two preceding sections, shall be considered unlawful assemblages, and shall be suppressed by sheriffs, constables, and other public officers.” On the complex history of the term “mulatto,” which denotes a group that comprised more than half the black populace in Illinois, and made up roughly one sixth of the slave populace of Missouri by this time, see Joel Williamson, New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 24-33, 57-59.

20 Lorenzo J. Greene, et. al., eds., Missouri’s Black Heritage, rev. ed. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 62-64.

21 Glaude, 147.

22 In “The Narrative of William Wells Brown,” specific instances of cruelty to slaves are described in some detail. In this 1847 narrative, Brown observed, “Though slavery is thought, by some, to be mild in Missouri, when compared with the cotton, sugar and rice growing States, yet no part of our slave-holding country, is more noted for the barbarity of its inhabitants, than St. Louis. It was here that Col. Harney, a United States officer, whipped a slave woman to death. It was here that Francis McIntosh, a free colored man from Pittsburgh, was taken from the steamboat Flora, and burned at the stake. During a residence of eight years in this city, numerous cases of extreme cruelty came under my own observation;--to record them all, would occupy more space than could possibly be allowed in this little volume.” William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds. Slave Narratives, Library of America (New York: Library Classics, 2000), 383.

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23 Cornelius, 2-3. The words of slaves and former slaves could be cited in abundance to buttress this point. I offer here just two illustrative examples: Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. When Douglass as a child overheard his master rebuke his mistress for teaching him the alphabet, it dawned on him that this forced ignorance was at the core of the thralldom of slavery. As an adult he reflected back upon the impact of this revelation on his determination as a youth to teach himself to read: “I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man . . . . From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.” Published just two years before the Missouri legislation, Douglass’s treatise offers a window into the fear of slave-state whites, and conversely the aspirations of slaves, regarding literacy. A generation later, Booker T. Washington, as a small child during the final years of slavery, had envied children who received a formal education, and expressed as much in the following poignant terms: “The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.” A generation later, Booker T. Washington, as a small child during the final years of slavery, had envied children who received a formal education, and expressed as much in the following poignant terms: “The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.” Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, ed. David W. Blight, Bedford Series in History and Culture (Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press: Boston, 1993 [1845]), 58; Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery, Signet Classic Edition (New York: Penguin, 2000 [1901]), 5.

24 Moore, 101.

25 Andrews & Gates, eds., Slave Narratives, 383.

26 Gosebrink and O’Connor, 2.

27 Edwin J. Benton, “A History of Public Education in Missouri, 1760-1964” (Ph.D. diss., St. Louis University, 1965), 51.

28 Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Pantheon, 1974), 143, 136.

29 Berlin, 136-37.

30 Berlin, 137-57.

31 Williams, 227.

32 Moses Roper, Narrative of My Escape from Slavery (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003 [republication of the 1837 edition]), 5-19.

33 Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 113.

34 Moses, 8.

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35 Patrick Rael, “Black Theodicy: African-Americans and Nationalism in the Antebellum North,” The North Star: A Journal of African American Religious History 3:2 (Spring, 2000), 7. Http://northstar.vassar.edu/volume3/rael.html.

36 Joanne Pope Melish, “The ‘Condition’ Debate and Racial Discourse in the Antebellum North,” Journal of the Early Republic 19 (Winter 1999), 669.

37 Richard Newman, Patrick Rael, and Phillip Lapansky, eds., Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African American Protest Literature, 1790-1860 (New York: Routlege, 2001), 85. This recent work is the best anthology, to my knowledge, of antebellum protest literature written by African Americans.

38Glaude, 146-59.

39 Ibid., 54.

40 For the religious dimensions of this uprooting, see Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 129-63; for an analysis giving greater weight to the agency of slaves in their own religious formation in their creative blending of Christian and African elements, see Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 3-97.

41 See Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 243-66.

42 Albert J. Raboteau, “’Ethiopia Shall Soon Stretch Forth Her Hands’: Black Destiny in Nineteenth-Century America” in his Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 42-43.

43 John Berry Meachum, An Address to all the Colored Citizens of the United States (Philadelphia: King and Baird, 1846), 60.

44 Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, “Negro Conventions and the Problem of Black Leadership,” Journal of Black Studies 2 (1971), 30. On the nuanced cluster of meanings attached to the rhetoric of “nationhood,” see Glaude, 63- 81. For an alternative, though in many ways overlapping, analysis of black leadership, see Vincent Bakpetu Thompson, “Leadership in the African Diaspora in the Americas Prior to 1860,” Journal of Black Studies 24 (1993), 42-76.

45 Meachum, 9.

46 Ibid., 7.

47 This was a common theme of the Negro conventions. For example, in his address at the convention in Buffalo, New York in 1843, Samuel H. Davis stated: “We also wish to secure, for our children especially, the benefits of education, which, in several States are entirely denied us, and in others are enjoyed only in name.” Minutes of the National Convention of Colored Citizens: Held at Buffalo, on the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th of August, 1843, for the Purpose of Considering their Moral and Political Condition as American Citizens (New York: Piercy & Reed,

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1843) 5; reprinted in Howard H. Bell, ed., Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions 1830- 1864, The American Negro: His History and Literature (New York: Arno Press, 1969).

48 Cleophus J. LaRue points out the role of black preaching in addressing social concerns from a position within the black community, both today and in the past: “Many African Americans believe that matters of vital importance in black life are best dealt with by other blacks, for example, issues such as teen-aged pregnancy, exhortations to blacks to lift themselves from the welfare rolls, black on black crime, and calls for educational excellence. They are convinced that some things can best be said to blacks by other blacks. More pointedly, there are some things that should only be said to blacks by other blacks. Issues and concerns that fall within this realm have historically been addressed from black pulpits.” Cleophus J. LaRue, The Heart of Black Preaching (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 24.

49 Meachum, 7.

50 Bell, “National Negro Conventions,” 247-60.

51 Meachum, 11-12.

52 On this point Meachum’s position may be both compared and contrasted with that of William Lloyd Garrison, a white Quaker and the chief proponent of non-violent moral suasionism within the ranks of the abolitionist movement. Garrison was an especially powerful and uncompromising figure in his demands for abolition, but seemed somewhat naïve about how threatening his views would be to white slaveholders, or how violence and warfare would come into play in defense of an inherently violent institution. In Garrison’s “Address to the Slaves of the United States” on June 2, 1845, he had urged, in a rather paternalistic manner, that: “The weapons with which the abolitionists seek to effect your deliverance are not bowie knives, pistols, swords, guns, or any other deadly implements. They consist of appeals, warnings, rebukes, arguments and facts, addressed to the understandings, consciences and hearts of the people. Many of your friends believe that not even those who are oppressed, whether their skins are white or black, can shed the blood of their oppressors in accordance with the will of God; while many others believe that it is right for the oppressed to rise and take their liberty by violence, if they can secure it in no other manner; but they, in common with all your friends, believe that every attempt at insurrection would be attended with disaster and defeat, on your part, because you are not strong enough to contend with the military power of the nation; consequently, their advice to you is, to be patient, long-suffering, and submissive, yet awhile longer—trusting that, by the blessing of the Most High on their labors, you will yet be emancipated without shedding a drop of your masters’ blood, or losing a drop of your own.” William Lloyd Garrison, “Address to the Slaves of the United States,” in William Lloyd Garrison and the Fight against Slavery: Selections from The Liberator, ed. William E. Cain (New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 111; see also William Lloyd Garrison, Selections from the Writings and Speeches of William Lloyd Garrison (1852; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968) 59, 65, 163-73.

53 On the importance of agency as a category in the study of antebellum African American experience, see also Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), x-xi.

54 See Pease and Pease, 29-44; see also Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, eds., Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, vol. 1, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979), 1:xiv-xv.

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55 Meachum., 37-41.

56 Ibid., 41.

57 See the excellent essay by Albert Raboteau, “African-Americans, Exodus, and the American Israel,” in African- American Christianity: Essays in History, ed. Paul E. Johnson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 1- 17.

58 Meachum, 46.

59 Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, translated by Ephraim Fischoff (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 46.

60 Lamentations 1:1-22; Jeremiah 20:7-18; Isaiah 44:1-5, 21-28; cf. 54:1-8.

61 Weber, 51.

62 Moses, 1.

63 Moses, 238.

64 Weber, 55. Weber identifies Muhammed and Zoroaster as instances of the former, and Buddha as an instance of the latter type of prophet.

65 Ibid., 58-59.

66 Weber, 48. Weber remarked that: “The Christian prophet was enjoined to live by the labor of his own hands or, as among the Buddhists, only from alms which he had not specifically solicited. These injunctions were repeatedly emphasized in the Pauline epistles, and in another form, in the Buddhist monastic regulations. The dictum ‘whosoever will not work, shall not eat’ applied to missionaries, and it constitutes one of the chief mysteries of the success of prophetic propaganda itself.”

67 Ibid.

68 “SUDDEN DEATH OF A COLORED PREACHER,” Obituary of John Berry Meachum, Daily Missouri Democrat, vol. 3, no. 47, February 21, 1854, n.p.

69 “St. Louis Historic Context: The African American Experience” website, http://stlouis.missouri.org/government/heritage/history/afriamer.htm.

70 An excellent starting point for examining the controversies is Jan Miller, “Annotated Bibliography of the Washington-Du Bois Controversy,” Journal of Black Studies 25 (1994), 250-72; but see the highly critical rhetoric directed at Washington by Donald Spivey, Schooling for the New Slavery: Black Industrial Education, 1868-1915, Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies, 38 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1978), 45-108.

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71 In arguing for industrial education to undergird more abstract forms of higher learning, Washington’s rhetoric clearly echoes themes found in Meachum: “Patiently, quietly, doggedly, persistently, through summer and winter, sunshine and shadow, by self-sacrifice, by foresight, by honesty and industry, we must re-enforce arguments with results. One farm bought, one house built, one home sweetly and intelligently kept, one man who is the largest tax payer or has the largest bank account, one school or church maintained, one factory running successfully, one truck garden profitably cultivated, one patient cured by a Negro doctor, one sermon well-preached, one office well-filled, one life cleanly lived—these will tell more in our favor than all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned to plead our cause. Our pathway must be up through the soil, up through swamps, up through forests, up through the streams, the rocks, up through commerce, education and religion!” Booker T. Washington, “Industrial Education for the Negro,” in The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative American Negroes of To-day (New York: AMS Press, 1903), 28-29. Reprint ed., 1970. To trace the history of the struggle to improve black education, north and south, pre-and post-Civil War, see: Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790- 1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1961), 113-52; W. A. Low, “The Education of Negroes Viewed Historically,” in Negro Education in America: its Adequacy, Problems and Needs, edited by Virgil A. Clift, et. al. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962), 27-59; Jacqueline Jones, Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865-1873 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1980), 59-66; C. Stuart McGehee, “E.O. Tade, Freedmen’s Education, and the Failure of Reconstruction in Tennessee,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 43 (1984), 376-89; Patrick J. Huber and Gary R. Kremer, “Nathaniel C. Bruce, Black Education, and the ‘Tuskegee of the Midwest’” Missouri Historical Review 86 (1991), 37-54; and Kenrick Ian Grandison, “Negotiated Space: The Black College Campus as a Cultural Record of Postbellum America,” American Quarterly 51 (1999), 529-79.

72 My thanks to Karen Jameson and Chris Crain for providing a helpful brochure on the “Freedom School” of University City, Missouri.

73 See Glaude, 160-67.

74 Meachum, 10.

75 Theologian James H. Cone has argued that these two streams in African American intellectual history are not as polarized as they are often made to appear. See James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: Dream or Nightmare (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 1-19; 244-71.